Network Effect

Arada’s mouth was twisted. “Eletra said there were two corporate ships here, correct? Did you arrive in this system before or after they did?”

Before. With my crew held hostage, I was forced to comply with their captors’ orders to fire on a Barish-Estranza support carrier. But my memory archive of that period is damaged and I don’t know what happened to the vessel or the crew.

“So the gray people could also have these corporate crews as prisoners.” Ratthi looked like he was trying to figure out just how many humans we might have to rescue. “Do you know why they brought Eletra and the other corporate onboard … you?” He made a vague gesture over his shoulder. “Why they put the implants in them?”

“I thought it was to torture them for fun,” Amena said darkly.

ART hesitated, though not long enough for the humans to notice. They may have wanted their shuttle. It’s still docked in my secondary cargo module slot. That hesitation would have been suspicious, but I also thought ART might honestly not know. Which was strange, because it should know. Maybe the memory archive issue was worse than ART had implied. But my two landing shuttles are also still in place, so that’s unlikely.

Arada propped her chin on her hand. She was exhibiting several behaviors indicating that she was deep in thought. “Perihelion, did the rest happen as you explained, that when you came back online your crew was gone?”

Yes.

There was a tone to that word. Not ART’s base level of sarcasm. It had an edge that echoed in the feed.

I didn’t react. ART had kidnapped me to get me here, put my humans in danger. I was not going to feel sympathy for it. Absolutely not.

Ratthi’s expression was dubious. “Any luck remembering what happened when they disappeared?”

I am still reconstructing damaged archives.

“Could SecUnit help you with that?” Amena asked, very casually, not looking at me.

I folded my arms and glared at the side of Amena’s head.

ART very obviously did not answer.

Overse leaned back in her chair, not comfortable. “We need to try to put together a timeline of when things happened.”

By the time I opened my mouth to say I had a chart, ART had said, Obviously, and threw a chart up next to the split screen. It showed the times (1) ART knew it had first arrived through the wormhole into the colony’s system, (2) when ART’s memory disruption occurred, (3) when it had reinitialized to find intruders aboard and its crew gone and an alien remnant installed on its drive, (4) the attack on the corporate supply carrier, (5) the moment the deletion occurred, and (6) the moment ART’s backup restarted. All except for Point One were estimates as ART’s onboard timekeeping had been disrupted. (Yes, it had actually left out the whole part about telling the Targets that I was a weapon they could use and bringing them to where they could attack our baseship, and using the comm code to locate me. That was fucking incredible.)

Amena was telling the others, “Before everything got weird—weirder—Ras tried to tell me about the colony reclamation project, but Eletra cut him off and changed the subject.”

Thiago looked at the view of the bunkroom, where Eletra was hidden under blankets. He said, “Is it possible that these people—the gray people—” He shook his head. “We know influence—terrible effects—from alien remnants are possible. Could the gray people have come from either the recent colony or the original one? Or are the corporates likely to use genetic manipulation on their colonists?”

Undetermined, ART said, like it honestly didn’t give a crap.

And honestly, it probably didn’t. The Targets had attacked ART’s crew. It wasn’t interested in the mystery, it just wanted its crew back.

When no one else could answer the question, Ratthi leaned his elbows on the table. “I think the corporates would do anything they could get away with. Obviously these gray people—what do we call them?”

“Targets,” I said.

Thiago did a thing with his eyes that was like an eyeroll but not quite. Ratthi continued, “The Targets must have brought the alien remnant tech that was installed on the wormhole drive.”

Overse tapped her fingers on the table, thinking. “Those implants weren’t alien remnant tech. In fact, they were old. Much older than thirty-seven years, when the corporate colony was established.”